


humani nil a me alienum puto

by hamiltvn



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5165615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamiltvn/pseuds/hamiltvn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anya hesitated, turning the assertion over, examining it for cracks of insincerity or perhaps even an outright lie. Finally, she nodded, satisfied, and the smile she directed at Lexa might have been blinding, except she still looked worn out. “Guess that makes you the big cheese of everyone, then.”</p><p>“Then what does that make everyone else?”</p><p>Anya slid down into the seat again and her eyes fell shut once more. “I dunno. Kraft slices?”</p><p>And finally, Lexa smiled.</p><p><i>Yeah, pick on someone your own size.</i> </p><p>Unfortunately, there was no one her own size anymore.</p><p>---</p><p>(a sci-fi au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	humani nil a me alienum puto

**Author's Note:**

> [come yell @ me](http://hamiltvn.tumblr.com/)

* * *

**before**

_The people in this city, they're predictable, like clockwork; thin black hands ticking across a wash of golden city lights blinking faintly in the background._

 

 

**after**

“You’re bony.”

Lexa looked up at Anya, her hands stuck in her pockets as deep as they would go. She followed the line of her cousin’s disapproving gaze until it hit the computer screen sitting in front of her, crammed with blue lines of code.

“Have you eaten?”

“…Yes.”

Anya arched a brow, disbelief etched across every feature. “Lexa.”

“…a couple hours ago…”

“Lexa.”

“…a many couple of hours ago…”

_“Lexa.”_

“God, fine. What the fuck do you want me to say?” Lexa would have tossed her hands up in the air if she could, but her computer whirred insistently on. “You already know the answer.”

Anya’s frown transitioned into a very scary thunderstorm of a scowl, one that Lexa certainly didn’t want to get caught up in much less be on the receiving end of. Sighing, she slumped back down into her seat and said, “Clarke should be back soon with food.” _Theoretically._

“…I see.” Anya grabbed a chair and yanked it up next to Lexa’s work space, the bottoms of the legs making a god-awful screeching sound against the floor that sounded like a dying cat. “You work far too hard.”

Therein lied the crux of the problem.

“We need money,” Lexa said dully, and it is without a doubt the lamest excuse she's ever made in her entire life. It's also a bald-faced lie, but Anya, true to form, doesn't decide to comment on  _that,_ she has to say _—_

“Need I remind you that your girlfriend is filthy rich?”

_“Anya.”_

“Her mother makes a six-figure salary easy with that cardiology-surgeon–whatsit job of hers.”

“You are quite right. Her _mother._ Not Clarke. And I would appreciate it if you did not talk about my girlfriend as if she is a clump of month-old mold stuck on the sole of your shoe that you cannot scrape off.”

Anya’s exhale was sharp. “What I think about _your girlfriend_ has nothing to do with it. I was being objective. Eighty-hour weeks are hell for anyone and you’ve been doing this for at least a month —”

“I don’t get tired and you know it. Not after — not after it.” Lexa heard the irritation in her own voice rising into a rather alarming fever pitch. She quickly sunk her fingers into the keyboard and forced herself into the sea of virtual commands, shoving down her exasperation until it was nothing more than a memory. But still — Anya must have heard it, and to her credit, didn’t comment on it. Instead, she pivoted neatly into a lighter line of conversation.

“Well…you and Clarke are still going steady, then.”

Lexa listened carefully for any hint of disapproval, but there was none. Anya was a closed book. “I hoped that would be obvious.”

“You still swinging it when you go out?”

“Swinging what?” Lexa glanced at Anya out of the corner of her eye, disapproval palpable in the gesture.

“You know, _my girlfriend’s got a bigger yacht than your girlfriend.”_

“What?” Beat. “Oh… _no._ No, I do not ‘swing’ anything.”

Anya gave her a quick once-over. “Oh, really?”

“Yes.” This time, the affirmation didn’t stop a blush from flushing her cheeks a light pink. True to form, Anya pounced on the _almost_ confession.

“Called it. Chicks really dig that _who, me?_ crap.”

“And you would be shutting up now, because you are going somewhere that you really do not want to go.”

“Is that a challenge I hear?”

“No. A word of advice.” Lexa jerked her hands out of the keyboard with a quiet _bzzt_ and tried not to feel sorry for snapping at the only person other than Clarke who even bothered to talk to her these days. “I am tired and cranky. And yes, a little hungry, soon to be a lot hungry, and my girlfriend has disappeared while she was supposed to be getting food for us so we do not have to eat the nutritious-but-inedible crap they were serving in the cafeteria. I do not need to hear a bunch of pointless-but-sure-to-be-amusing jokes about how the quiet ones are the worst, or how I just got lucky because nerds are in again this year.”

Anya was unimpressed. “Nerds? Really?”

Lexa glared at the black wires snaking their way across the table, then at the keyboard. “Hackers. Corp dogs. Cyber commandos, if you can believe that is what they’re calling it these days. Whatever.”

Anya glanced back at the computer screen, then at the wires, then at Lexa’s hidden hands and naked forearms and then turned and took it all in stride. “Yeah, you really are missing that Big Mac rush, aren’t you?”

Lexa looked away again. “…I’m sorry. That was rude of me.”

Anya didn’t deny it.

They sat in silence for the next three or four minutes, Anya slouched down on the cushioned seat, crossing her arms and shutting her eyes for a few seconds at a time, while every so often, Lexa glanced at the clock on the wall and grimaced at Clarke’s not-here-ness.

Then suddenly, Anya sat up straight again and drew a breath, as though stirring herself into wakefulness. “It is a choice, right?”

“Sorry?”

“For all those people?” Anya pointed at Lexa’s work.

For a short second, Lexa didn’t understand, staring uncomprehendingly at the code. Then, catching on, she sighed. “Um. Well. A choice. Yes, that’s what they say.”

Anya’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Caught between a deluge of triggered responses — sympathetic guilt, sympathy on its own, and non-sympathetic annoyance — Lexa tugged nervously at black wire, wincing as it popped out, and went for reassuring gravity: “Anya, I believe it. I do. I wouldn’t have complied otherwise.”

Anya hesitated, turning the assertion over, examining it for cracks of insincerity or perhaps even an outright lie. Finally, she nodded, satisfied, and the smile she directed at Lexa might have been blinding, except she still looked worn out. “Guess that makes you the big cheese of everyone, then.”

“Then what does that make everyone else?”

Anya slid down into the seat again and her eyes fell shut once more. “I dunno. Kraft slices?”

And finally, Lexa smiled.

_Yeah, pick on someone your own size._

Unfortunately, there was no one her own size anymore.

 

 

**before**

_There is an old man whose hair is liberally streaked with soft silver, and if I had to guess I think his age would be around his late fifties or early sixties, who drops by regularly at the little bakery that's next to my secluded niche in the wall and I see every day. He whistles the same tune past gap-toothed teeth every day — "American Pie," I think it's called._

_He goes into the pastry shop, never staying for more than five minutes at a time, and always comes out with a different kind of donut. Sometimes with a heavy cream filling, others with chocolate frosting, and yet others with sticky sweet glaze and rainbow-colored sprinkles._

_He never notices me._

 

_There is a young man who is a clerk at a Swarovski, and I have watched, over the course of one year, him fall deeply in love with the child of some classy restaurant owner just down the street._

_I am watching the day the two of them share their first kiss in the night, underneath the hazy yellow glow of a scuffed black streetlamp that has moths fluttering around its bulb, and I am still watching when they are wrenched away from each other by the red-faced, screaming restaurant owner, their fingertips hooking desperately around each other for one last touch before they are separated, forever._

_Both of them were men._

 

_There is a metal man who patrols the streets sometimes in his armor, heavy brass boots clomping loudly onto scuffed and dirty pavement. I always try to melt into the shadows a little further when he comes around, because he and his brethren are well-known for being ruthless. Toward people like me, toward people who did not conform._

_Steaming pistons, grinding gears, gleaming red metal disks in his helmet for eye plates. Everything about him is artificial, from his segmented metallic gloves to the mechanism attached to his breastplate. It looks like an abacus might, if the abacus had been rolled around in sticky glue and then dunked in a scrap tank full of capacitors and transistors and vacuum tubes. The industrial age vibe he gives off, that_ all  _of his kind gives off, is in stark contrast to the advanced technology of the rich sector of the city he hails from, all jutting glass skyscrapers and magnetic express lanes and advanced technological genius._

_What a way to live as the modern-age Gestapo._

 

 

**now**

"Fuck you; you didn't have to scream!"

The woman had been a voluptuous brunette, with long locks that lapped at her shoulders like the tide across a tropical beach. Her defined jawline and cheekbones only enhanced her powerful image.

He had told her that he was to "network" with her, perhaps a friendly chat between dealers.

He was also a terrible liar: she tracked his every movement, the little scratches to his scrubby mustache to the twitching of the centers of his eyes.

It didn't help knowing. It had still hurt when the brunette had walked out of the back entrance of the pub, their figures entwined together — two snakes slithering, mating, poisoning each other.

"You didn't have to fucking scream!" He had held his head in his hands, the woman gone in a huff, her night "thoroughly ruined."

"Dammit. What the fuck am I supposed to do, you bitch?"

The words stung worse than any slap, leaving internal bruises, black and blue.

"You're such a prude. You never want to fuck, and I've got needs, okay? That's why it happened. It's not my fault! Why can't you just loosen up? It shouldn't even be this big of a deal. Why have you got problems with this? You did this. You were the one who made this an issue."

She was being crushed from the inside, her legs trembling, her hands covering her face, oceans leaking from her fingers.

"Stop crying. Stop — FUCKING — CRYING!"

If only she knew how to stop just as well as she knew how to run away.

 

 

**before**

_Once in a while, someone will see me, and they'll wave and smile a bit. Either that, or quickly turn their heads away._

_I don't mind._

_I see plenty of things from my corner of the universe; I see drug addicts, I see street performers, I see hippies—I see the other homeless, like me. I am used to being ignored._

_Which is probably why I see them, but only after they see me._

* * *

**end prologue**


End file.
